


i see things (that nobody else sees)

by bilgegungoren00



Series: who is in control? [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hank is an android, Panic Attack, Role Reversal AU, and connor is lieutenant anderson, brief mention of tracis, eden club chapter, tw: Mentions of Suicide, tw: panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 16:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15513870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bilgegungoren00/pseuds/bilgegungoren00
Summary: Lieutenant Connor Anderson and his android partner, Hank, goes to investigate a murder in Eden Club.Role Reversal AU part 2Trigger Warning: panic attack, mentions of suicide





	1. the Tracis

**Author's Note:**

> soooo yep. i'm continuing this role-reversal AU, even though i wasn't planning on initially, but my plot bunnies weren't leaving me and i just had to write it. (i might also have a couple of more ideas for this, so we'll see, i might add another part to this lol) hope you like this!
> 
> P.s. I really recommend you read the first part before this, it'll really help with the context. you might be confused otherwise :)
> 
> P.s. 2 The title is from the song Dollhouse by Melanie Martinez

“You never told me there were two victims.” That was the first thing Connor told the club owner the moment he stepped inside the room. Technically, there was only one body in the room—since the crime happened the previous night, they had to remove the _human_ body for examination. Connor knew all about that part.

What he wasn’t told about was the android lying inside the room, obviously…dead. Connor wouldn’t use human terminology for an android a couple of days ago, but his views were slowly, but surely, changing, and he couldn’t help feeling sorry for the girl lying on the floor.

He looked up at Hank to see him examining the body, an emotionless look on the android’s face. The _machine_ standing in front of Connor now bore no resemblance to the _man_ who came to his house the previous night and helped him through a panic attack.

Connor quickly shook away those thoughts and returned to the crime scene. They weren’t in his house now, and here, in the disgustingly appealing rooms of the Eden Club, he was Lieutenant Anderson, and Hank was just his android partner.

Connor turned to the club owner. “Who is she?” he asked, indicating the android. It seemed like both Hank and the club owner took notice that he called the android a “she” instead of an “it”. Neither said anything.

“It was hired by the victim,” the club owner explained. “It’s a Traci model. It was found like this.” Connor knelt next to the android, letting Hank do his thing in the room.

“Was she the only one hired?” he asked. He and Hank reviewed the evidence yesterday, and he remembered reading that Traci, before shutting down, claimed that there was another android in the room with them. She wasn’t able to reveal the android’s model or appearance, but since it was the only lead they got…

“I’m sorry, lieutenant. That information is classified. Club policy.” Anger filled Connor’s gut—club policy? Yeah, right. More like an excuse to hide their shady business—but he stayed calm as he stood up.

“Fine. Then we’ll just get a warrant. Hank?” Hank’s eyes turned to Connor, and he almost seemed _delighted_ by the turn of events. “Can you request—“

The club owner interjected before Connor could get far. _Jackpot._ “Okay, okay! I… He hired another android. It was another Traci model.” The man pressed a couple of buttons on his tablet before turning it to Connor. Traci’s face smiled back at Connor, only this time she had blue hair. “We can’t find it anywhere here, so it must’ve run away after the…um, the incident.” Connor nodded, looking around the room. Nothing else caught his mind, and Hank seemed to be finished also. Technically, they didn’t have to come to the crime scene—everything they needed was at the precinct. But Connor wanted to see the place, to get an idea about what they were dealing with.

“I think we’re done here,” he announced, loud enough for Hank to hear. “Do you have anything else to add?” Hank shook his head.

Connor looked once more at the dead android, ready to leave the room—

“Wait,” he stopped, truly taking in the girl’s appearance. “Do all your androids dress that way?” And by _that way,_ Connor meant just a damn bra and panties, nothing else. One could barely call them _clothes._

The club owner seemed surprised. “Uh…yeah?” Connor looked at Hank, and it seemed like both of them came to the same conclusion at the same time.

“She can’t go out dressed like that unnoticed,” Connor pointed out. Hank’s eyes turned fiery with determination.

“It might still be here,” he finished. Connor could already feel the metaphorical—and literal—wheels turning in his head…or whatever. He didn’t really know how androids functioned.

Connor turned to the club owner. “Is there any place here an android could hide without being noticed?”

That was how they ended up in front of the storage room, a gun in Connor’s hand and Hank behind him. Connor quietly opened the door and stepped in, not letting his guard down. He _knew_ that the Traci might’ve already left the place by the time they came, but… He remembered Carlos Ortiz’s android. Even after three weeks, the android had stayed _in the house._ He had claimed that he felt at a loss when there was no one to tell him what to do.

Could this Traci have felt the same? If yes…it meant she might be here.

Connor turned his head to the group of androids in the room, walking over there slowly. He could hear Hank doing his thing behind him—he wasn’t even going to fucking check _just in case_ he was licking blood again. As handy as it was, it was still disgusting. His eyes flickered around, catching the sight of blue hair and a red LED just before someone jumped on him. His gun was ripped off of his hand and he felt his back connect with the floor, jolts of pain shooting through his veins.

He recovered quickly to find an android—another Traci model, but this one with short brown hair—pinning him to the ground, ready to punch him. He blocked the punch and rolled away. He looked up to see Hank dealing with another problem—the blue-haired Traci they were looking for.

The fight was eventually carried outside, the Traci models obviously desperate to get away. Short-haired one threw Connor to the ground to join her counterpart, and from her spot he saw them hold hands together, sharing a quick look—a look that anyone else might easily overlook, but not Connor. He’d been trained to notice microexpressions, and that look… It carried care, worry, determination, and…love. A love just like two humans might feel for each other, not two _machines_.

A love not unlike what he started to see in Hank as well. It had started from the moment they met before the Carlos Ortiz case—the android had warned him about the dangers of smoking. And then it was with the pigeon android—Rupert—when Hank chose to save Connor and let Rupert run away. (And Connor didn’t need statistics to know that he could’ve easily survived that situation. Rupert might’ve pushed him off the building, but he had been frantic and desperate and hadn’t really landed the hit. Connor had a good grip and could’ve pulled himself up—and Hank must’ve known that. It still didn’t change the android’s decision.) Then, just yesterday, when Hank saw him have a…panic attack, he talked him through it, he took care of him afterward, and he risked losing a case because of that. He even left that fucking note with anything he thought might help Connor. And he hadn’t said a word to about to anyone—Connor had been terrified of that, but in the precinct this morning no one looked at him or treated him differently.

While Connor wouldn’t necessarily say that Hank was in love with him or anything, it was love of some sorts. It was caring.

Connor pushed himself up from the ground but didn’t attempt to pursue the girls. He could’ve, but he didn’t want to. He wanted them to get away, to survive, to _live._    

But Hank had a different idea, apparently. Before the girls could get away he stopped them, his gun trained on them. Connor’s heart skipped a beat. “Hank, don’t!” he warned the android, quickly rushing to his side. “Don’t shoot them.” He saw that Hank’s hand was shaking. Unsteady. Since Connor doubted that was programmed into androids, it must’ve been Hank’s hesitation.

Unflinching and unafraid, Connor stepped in front of Hank and put a hand over the gun, prompting the android to lower it. “You don’t want to do that,” he whispered, letting his walls down so that Hank could see the fear and vulnerability in his eyes. The…empathy there for the Tracis.

Hank slowly lowered the gun, and Connor took a relieved breath. He looked over his shoulder at the Tracis. They were holding hands, their eyes fearful, watching the scene unfold in front of them. “Go,” Connor told them. “Leave before someone else finds you.” _Someone less than sympathetic._ The Tracis looked surprised, but they didn’t hesitate before jumping over the fence and running away.

Connor, even though he was usually terrified of failing an assignment, weirdly didn’t feel afraid at all. He felt…relieved.

Fuck, he needed a cigarette.


	2. old school

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! so, i know i said it would take me some time to post this chapter, but guess what? i had about two hours of free time, and i actually managed to write and edit it, so here we go! honestly, i wasn't THAT happy about the previous chapter (it was kind of a setup for this, really) but i'm pretty proud of this one, so i hope you like it too! we also get a bit more insight about connor's past, so that's just an added bonus :)
> 
> and again, as i said, i plan on continuing this AU, so if you would like to see more of this (it will probably loosely follow the events of the game) just let me know in the comments!

Connor came here frequently, especially at nights when he was particularly overwhelmed with the day—and had no cases to work on. His old high school.

Well, more particularly, the _roof_ of his high school. (The security guard knew him and let him in at this point, and if not he could just flash his badge—it always worked.)

Most people remembered their high school years with either fondness or hatred, with a rare middle ground, he had observed. He felt like he was one of the rare ones. Sure, he liked high school. He hadn’t been the most popular guy, and the school wasn’t a particularly fancy one, but he had a couple of friends that made it bearable and the lessons were mostly okay. Yet there was one part that he hated.

The anxiety.

It was in those years that Connor had first started struggling with anxiety problems. It had started with a mere fear of failing—a lot of people were depending on him at the end. His parents weren’t very rich, and they never planned on having more than one child—at least until Connor’s brothers were born a year apart, first Caleb and then Richard. His mother didn’t have it in her to have abortion, and thus, being ten years their senior, it fell on Connor’s shoulders to take care of his brothers. To get a job, earn some decent money, and make sure that his brothers had a good education and life.

Failing had never been an option for Connor.

But that fear of failing—stress, more like—didn’t stay as just that. Soon, it turned into a fear of what would happen if he failed: his parents disappointed, his brothers not being able to afford a good education, all of them living in poverty… That fear gripped him so much that Connor found himself studying more and more each day—almost obsessively, staying up until three or four a.m. each day. His coffee and cigarette addiction started in those years as well, as a means to cope. He knew what he was doing wasn’t healthy—he wasn’t stupid—but he couldn’t stop himself. The what-ifs paralyzed him in fear, and he found himself studying yet again.

He had his first panic attack after a particularly bad history exam, when he had his first B-minus. (And yeah, objectively, he knew B-minus wasn’t a bad grade at all. It was, worst-case scenario, average. But that didn’t mean, after getting straight As for two years, it didn’t terrify him.) He thought he’d failed, that his grades would drop, that he would never be able to get into a good college and have a good job, and he’d condemn his family to poverty and his brothers to bad education and a worse life and—The thoughts just didn’t stop, and soon enough he was in his room, curled up in a corner, trying to breathe as everything spun around him and his body didn’t feel like his own. Even after he calmed down, which took about half an hour, he couldn’t focus on anything. He just cried himself to sleep.

The panic attacks were rare enough at first that he didn’t think he needed help. (In hindsight, he was probably wrong.) And then when they became frequent, he didn’t want to bother his family—he was their golden child, and he didn’t want them to think he was failing inside. (Maybe he also wanted his parents to notice it by themselves, to ask him if something was wrong—but they’d been too busy. They had two younger children to take care of and both of them were working; they didn’t have much time left for Connor except occasional praises and I-love-yous. He didn’t blame them for it. He just…wished.) He thought he could—he should be able to—handle it alone. So he found his own, albeit unhealthy, ways. He smoked more frequently, he studied more, and…whenever things got too overwhelming, he began cutting himself.

And here he was today, still struggling with anxiety, still smoking, still cutting himself. He didn’t improve much.

He sighed, discarding his finished cigarette and grabbing a new one. He heard footsteps approaching him.

It must be Hank. He told the android that he should wait in the car, but he also knew it’d been some time since then. He didn’t blame Hank for growing bored.

“Lieutenant?” Hank asked softly. If Connor didn’t know better, he might mistake him for a human. “Are you okay?”

Connor looked down the roof. “This is where it all started for me,” he said instead of answering. Hank knew what he was talking about. “So I come here when…” He stopped, wondering whether he should say something.

“When…what?” Hank prompted him. Connor sighed. What did he have to lose?

“When I have to think. When things get too overwhelming. This place is a reminder to why I have to go on, when it is too easy to give up and kill myself.” He looked down the roof. “This isn’t a tall building. If I jumped down, I have a chance to survive. But I may also die. And sometimes…the idea just doesn’t scare me at all. It is welcome.”

“You think about killing yourself?” Connor chuckled. Well, leave it to Hank to be as blunt as possible.

“Sometimes. I just think…why bother? Why live in pain when I can just end it all? Killing yourself is too easy—a bullet to the brain, a couple of pills, a tall enough building… Living seems too hard in comparison.”

“Lieutenant—“ Connor could almost hear the worry in Hank’s voice. He sighed and stepped back from the edge.

“Don’t worry, Hank. I’m not going to kill myself. I still have too much to live for. Caleb had just started med school and Richard is still in college. They need me.” Hank stayed silent for a second, not saying a word. His eyes flickered to the cigarette in Connor’s hand.

“But you kill yourself every day,” he said. Connor arched his brow.

“Wow. I wouldn’t expect such philosophy from an android.” Hank promptly chose to ignore him.

“You smoke a lot, you are reckless in dangerous cases, and you don’t try to get help for your anxiety, even though you know it is a medical condition and the worst thing in this case is hiding. You kill a part of yourself every day.”

Connor pressed his lips together. Damn, Hank could be too perceptive sometimes. He looked at the half-finished cigarette in his hand. “This is my way of coping. I can’t drink alcohol or do drugs without it affecting my ability to work, so smoking is the next best thing. It is the only way I can survive.”

“You know that’s not true.” Connor looked away from Hank. He knew, but he didn’t want to admit it. He wasn’t ready to admit it.

So he changed the subject to something more relevant—something that happened just hours ago. “You hesitated,” he told Hank. The android seemed surprised.

“About what?”

“Shooting the Tracis. You could’ve just shot them, but you stopped, even before I stepped in front of you. You hesitated.” He looked at the android. “I thought you were incapable of feeling. That you’d do anything to accomplish your mission. But you let two deviants go.” He stopped for a second, assessing Hank’s reaction. The android looked as cold as ever, but Connor could see a twitch in his eye—a sign of worry. “Why?”

“I just…felt like killing them would be pointless. We need them alive if we want to learn something from them.” Connor scoffed. What a bunch of bullshit. But he let it slide, instead grabbing another cigarette. His packet was finished—he needed to buy a new one tonight.

“Well, what about me?” he asked in a reckless moment. “I’m a nuisance to the case, with my anxiety problems. You should know that.” Hank didn’t deny it. “But you took care of me yesterday instead of pursuing your case. You hid my anxiety even though you could’ve reported it and be assigned to someone else—someone better.”

“I am assigned to you, Lieutenant. It is in my best interest that you are well.” Connor could smell Hank’s lies, no matter how indifferent the android looked. He was trained for it, at the end.

And Hank was right about one thing—he was reckless, especially when his life was concerned. Moreover, he was overwhelmed with the day, he’d had too many cups of coffee—he couldn’t think straight. So he took out his gun and pressed the barrel under his chin.

Hank gasped audibly. “Connor, what are you doing?” Connor could see in his eyes that he wanted to rush and pull away the gun, but the android was afraid Connor would shoot before he could do it. As Connor took the safety off, he didn’t know Hank’s chances. It must’ve been low enough that the android didn’t attempt anything.

“Fine. Let’s say you didn’t care about Tracis—that it was part of your mission to not kill them. What about me? Do you care about me?” He stepped forward, almost taunting Hank. “You look human, you sound human, and you certainly act like you are one. You act like you care. But do you, really? You and I both know it would make your job much easier if I just died. You wouldn’t have to deal with a mentally broken partner.”

“Connor, you’re not thinking right—“

“Are you just a machine, Hank, or are you something more? Are you capable of feeling?”

“You know you shouldn’t shoot. This isn’t the right way.” Connor ignored Hank’s words.

“I don’t know what happens to me if I shoot. Heaven, best-case scenario, I guess, but I doubt there is anything on the other side. The question is, what would you feel? Would you just move on, or would you care about—“

“YES!” Hank’s yell took Connor by surprise. His grip on the gun loosened a bit. “Yes, I would care. I don’t want you to die. Please, Connor, just give me the gun. Please,” Hank pleaded. A pleading android. That was a first.

He let Hank take the gun. He knew inside he wasn’t going to shoot. It was just a reckless decision to taunt Hank—to get a reaction out of him. What reaction he expected, Connor didn’t exactly know, but it certainly wasn’t this. Hank openly admitting to care…

It was an obvious sign of deviancy. And Connor knew, as a lieutenant, he should report it. He should report Hank. But…he just let the Tracis go after seeing how much they care about each other. If Hank cared about him… Was it really that wrong?

He wouldn’t report Hank. Cyberlife, DPD, Captain Fowler, or whatever be damned. He wasn’t going to let anyone harm the android. Let alone himself.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized to the obviously shaken android. “I would never shoot myself. I shouldn’t have done that.” Hank looked up from the gun, fear evident in his eyes. God, how ironic it was—deviant hunter turning deviant himself.

“I know,” Hank whispered, giving back the gun. Connor noted that the android’s hands were shaking. He arched his brows as he put away the gun.

“You knew?”

“There was 97% odds that you wouldn’t shoot yourself, that you were just taunting me.” Ninety-seven percent. Almost perfect odds.

And yet, Hank had still feared for Connor’s life.

Connor just nodded, deciding not to question further. “Come on,” he told the android. “It’s getting late. I should head home…and you wherever you need to go. You can stay with me as well if you want.” Hank just nodded and followed Connor.

Connor couldn’t help glancing at the android as he unlocked the car. Couldn’t stop thinking how three percent odds of Connor killing himself had terrified Hank enough to fear. A machine wouldn’t even flinch at those percentages. It was…such a human thing, to fear the unlikely even in the face of perfect odds. Or the reverse scenario, to believe in the unlikely even if things pointed another way.

Well, it seemed that there was always a chance for unlikely things to happen.

**Author's Note:**

> i was actually planning to make this longer, but it's like midnight right now and i'm so damn tired, but i really wanted to get this out there today. i'm gonna work on the next chapter tomorrow, but i'm pretty busy (i'm on a family vacation so i basically spend the whole day outside) and the wifi here kinda sucks, but i promise i'll try to post it as soon as i can.
> 
> have a good day/night or whatever time it is wherever you are :)


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